Getting to the Root of Recruiting Challenges

Employers aren’t happy with their hiring processes, according to a 2015 survey of 1,400 employers and 13,000 candidates by Allegis Group Inc. They’re frustrated with both the quantity and the quality of the job applicants they receive when they advertise an open position. What factors influence the candidate pool and what can employers do to get more – and more valuable – job candidates?

The survey found that, among employers:

Only 1/3 are very satisfied with the number of applicants received

Half report receiving too few applicants per opening

Only 1/3 are very satisfied with the quality of applicants received

So is there anything employers can do to boost their satisfaction with the process? Plenty.

What separates the leaders?
In the survey, employers that reported high satisfaction with job candidates share one key trait; they prioritize the candidate experience. That means focusing on the recruiting process from the candidate’s point of view and making sure it is optimized.

Candidates surveyed ranked their top three must-haves in the recruiting process:

85 percent want consistent communication throughout the process

81 percent want accurate job descriptions

63 percent want hiring companies to be responsive to their calls and emails

What gets measured gets done
Organizations that measure talent acquisition performance with candidate satisfaction are significantly more likely to say that these are not issues:

Quality of applicants

Quantity of applicants

Time to fill

Cost per hire

Onboarding process

Yet only 35 percent of employers rank the candidate experience as one of the top three performance metrics in talent acquisition.

Frustrations with talent acquisition’s product – i.e. candidate quality – most often stem from problems within the recruitment process itself.
Nearly two out of five organizations do not have a documented recruiting process to guide success. It is no surprise then that fewer than half of hiring managers, human resources professionals, and candidates are very satisfied with the recruitment process. Without a process, recruitment becomes disorganized and yields inconsistent results.

Yet, even those employers who have a documented process struggle to ensure alignment and understanding throughout their organization. After all, a process document alone does not equate to consistently performing the right behaviors across all stakeholders groups.

Our research found that those organizations that embrace fundamental recruiting truths – and align their recruitment processes accordingly – win the war for talent.

Want to know more? Check back next week for Part 2 of 5, or access a white paper with the full results of the survey.

The time you spend screening candidates is easily recouped by restricting your interviews to only the most appropriate candidates. And it can even help you avoid candidates who aren’t completely truthful.

As a hiring manager, you probably want that open position filled yesterday. But don't let the pressure to hire quickly lead to glossing over the importance of writing an accurate, detailed and complete job description.